Tuesday, July 26, 2011

It's used as a euphemism for death: “All were saddened at his passing.”

I'm told I should be happy about “passing.” When used to refer to trans people, “passing” is defined as being accepted by others as a member of one's identified sex, on the basis of appearance, mannerism and voice. Ever since my voice changed and my facial hair came in, I've been congratulated by others (both cis and trans) for being able to “pass,” despite my height and frame (I'm a mighty 5'2”). I'm told that I “pass pretty well” as a man. It always makes me very uncomfortable.

I've listened to so many trans people express huge amounts of anxiety about not being able to "pass," and I empathize utterly with their fears. People who are obviously trans--especially those who are perceived as "men trying to be women" by the transphobic--often face virulent bigotry. People stop and point and stare when we walk down the street in middle America; adults pull their children away from us; insecure, hypermasculine types jump us; hysterical people call the cops on us when we use a public restroom. In much of the country, people who are obviously trans face being fired from their jobs and often find themselves being treated as criminal suspects by the police. It's scary stuff, and who would not want to take a pass on that?

But let's think more about the term “passing.” It's a term with a weighty history, referring to concealment of one's marginalized true identity, in order to avoid violence and discrimination. In the U.S., it's often used in the context of race, as in the case of the fairskinned Anita Florence Hemmings, who passed as a white woman in order to attend Vasser College in the late 1800s. She's now celebrated as Vasser's first African American graduate, but when her “colored blood” was discovered in 1897, five days from her graduation date, it was a great scandal, and the school was outraged at Hemmings' “deceit,” living in the dormitories amidst unsuspecting white “women of quality.” Hemmings, an excellent student, was given her diploma but sent home in disgrace, her classmates cutting off all social contact.

Hemmings passed as white in order to gain access to privileges unfairly denied to women of color. Sometimes the motive for passing is more urgent—a matter of life or death. Consider the case of Edith Hahn Beer, a young German Jewish women who escaped from a train taking her to a concentration camp, and used the identity papers of an Aryan Christian schoolmate to establish herself as a “respectable” German nurse. She met and married a Nazi soldier, avoided any close friendships for fear of revealing her secret, and survived the war while her family died in the camps.

The actions taken by Anita Hemmings and Edith Hahn Beer to pass as white or as Aryan are totally understandable. But they also illustrate why the idea that trans people should be encouraged to “pass” is highly problematic.

First of all, one passes as something one is not. Hahn Beer was a Jew, and after the fall of Nazi Germany she stopped passing as an Aryan and returned to her name and religion of birth. By this logic, if someone tells me I am “passing” as a man, then I am being framed as “really” a woman. I am being complimented on an excellent deception. Thus the term “passing” undermines the fundamental fact of a trans person's life: that we transition to our true genders. For many years, I passed as a woman, having been assigned female at birth, and it is only now that I have transitioned to male status that I am displaying my real identity, my truth.

To think of a trans man as a “fake” man is the essence of cissexism. This is why every time I listen to one of the many people I've met who are afraid to transition cry, “I can't—I'll never be able to pass as a man/woman,” I sigh, because I know that the real battle they face is not their bodily structure, but their internalized cissexism, which tells them they don't have the right to claim their true gender identities because their bodies trump their inner truth. Cissexism holds that appearance is all, and that trans people who don't conform to binary sex ideals are fakes, freaks who deserve to be mocked and harassed. As if cis men never looked down at their bodies to find themselves short, or sporting moobs, or sparsely haired. As if cis women were never tall or flat-chested or strong. As if people were never born intersex, like me.

The pressure on trans people to “pass” creates a spectrum of privilege among trans people, depending on how closely our bodies conform to binary gender ideals for our identified genders. This is similar to other dimensions of identity—for example, the way that African Americans still gain privilege from having lighter skin and straighter hair. It's wrong that an African American born with darker skin is likely to grow up to have an income substantially less than an African American born with lighter skin, and it's wrong that a trans woman born with a slighter bone structure faces less harassment than a trans woman whose body is taller and stronger-boned. It's an unfair, common pattern of bias and marginalization. But what makes it truly painful, in my mind, is the way we on the margins internalize it. Consider the term “good hair,” long-critiqued by African Americans, but still employed in the community to refer to hair that is lighter and straighter, which reflects a devaluation of African-looking hair. Among trans people, it's “passing” that is spoken of in ways that reflect internalized selfhatred.

A reader of my blog commented on my last post, “When I first started down this road, I had a support group that I attended every month. It was here that I first saw the dividing line. Outside of the group, those who 'passed' well socialized exclusively with the others who also 'passed' well. One of my 'friends' was very direct about this. She said that one of us on their own might not draw any attention, but two or more of us in a group will get all of us read. Thusly, she only socialized with the 'passes well' group.”

I despair of the dynamic in marginalized groups in which those with somewhat more social privilege try to build themselves up by further marginalizing those with less privilege.

By now you may have come to the conclusion that I think trying to “pass” is evil, but that's not the case. Think again of the historical instances of “passing” that I raised. Hemmings and Hahn Beer protected themselves by “passing.” True, they saved only themselves. Today, some people tend to look back and cluck that they acted immorally, but I disagree. To save oneself from violence is a moral act. In the Hebrew Talmud it is said, "Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world." In passing as an Aryan German, Edith Hahn Beer saved her own life. Anita Hemmings did not face death camps, but she faced brutal treatment, poor schooling, segregation, and a life where she would be expected to work in menial jobs instead of developing her talents. She tried to save herself from this fate by passing for white. We'd find it more uplifting to hear that she risked herself to help her community rather than denying she was a part of it, but we cannot demand self-sacrifice.

A person who saves only himself from a fire and not others is not acting immorally. We can't insist that people be heroes. But a person who walks over others to increase her chances of survival is another matter. And there is an uncomfortable element in Hemmings' story of “passing.” After being sent home in disgrace by Vasser, she married the fair-skinned Dr. Andrew Jackson Love, a graduate of the “negro” Meharry Medical College, and they moved to New York, where Dr. Love claimed to have been educated at Harvard Medical School, and where they took up lives as a white couple. They raised their children as white, sending them to prestigious all-white private schools and summer camps. To avoid being “outed,” Hemmings refused to have contact with her parents, and when her mother insisted on a single visit to New York to meet her grandchildren, Hemmings made her use the servants' side entrance. And yes, the Hemmings-Love family had black servants, and did not share their secret with them. Perhaps they treated their servants more kindly than did their neighbors—but perhaps they did the opposite, in order to underline their position of racial privilege in the eyes of the members of their white social circle. We don't know. But this issue is important in the lives of people in many marginalized groups, including trans people.

To address the question of whether “passing” is a morally good act, a morally neutral act, or an immoral act, we have to break down the term more carefully and consider its components in context. When people speak of trans people “passing,” in fact they may be referring to any one of a series of things. They may mean “this person has made changes to their body and/or dress to reflect their gender identity”--in other words, that the person is gender transitioning or has transitioned. They may mean that the person embodies the binary gender ideal of their identified sex closely. Or they may mean that the person is living a “stealth” life, hiding the fact that they have gender transitioned, as Hahn Beer hid her Jewish status and Hemmings hid her ancestry.

At the center of trans gender ethics is the belief that gender transition is a moral good, because it allows honesty. When we come out, we cease to lie about whom we really are. I think using the term “passing” to mean “taking steps to reveal one's true self” to be a very poor choice of terms, but the action itself is good. I'd simply call it “transitioning.”

The second usage of the term “passing,” to mean “how closely a person embodies an iconic, binary, cis sex ideal” is morally neutral. It's like having blond hair and blue eyes: it conveys a social advantage, but there's nothing inherently superior (or inferior) about it. By the luck of the genetic draw, some trans women are born slight of form, and some trans men tall and robust, and to hold that against them would be ridiculous. But what is truly immoral is to for anyone to treat a person as inferior because they didn't win the social privilege lottery, and were born with dark skin, a Jewish nose, or a lot of body hair. What is also unfair is that, to a certain extent, embodying physical ideals is something that can be purchased. The wealthy can afford to sink the price of an average home into plastic surgery, but most of us cannot. Any while people of any background can gain social privilege through plastic surgery, the costs of not being able to afford surgery (or hormones or a new wardrobe) are much higher for trans people, for whom the changes are not merely cosmetic. Not being able to afford medical transition services sets up legal barriers to our transitions, limits our activities (you try swimming in a midwestern public pool as a trans man without having had top surgery), and leaves us at constant risk of physical violence from transphobic individuals who despise our bodies.

Now let's consider the implications of the third usage of the term “passing,” to mean living a “stealth” existence, in the closet about one's gender transition. What the term means here is “passing as a cis person.” In the early days of medical transition services, agreeing to hide one's pretransition past was a requirement of treatment. A person who leads a stealth life is able to avoid stigma and violence, to get a good job, to be accepted into a cis gender social circle. And to want a good, safe life for oneself is perfectly understandable. But just as in the case of passing for white or Aryan, it's a life of high risks and costs. There's an everpresent fear of discovery, the loss of ties to one's communities, and the temptation to bolster one's privilege by ill-using other trans people.

To assess the morality of living a stealth life and passing as a cis person, context is all-important. Consider the difference between Edith Hahn Beer and. . . the numerous antigay politicians and religious leaders who have been caught having secret same-sex relations. Hahn Beer would have been killed if her Jewish status were revealed, while the antigay hypocrites have built up their already plentiful social privilege by abusing others like themselves. Obviously, these are extreme cases, one of moral rectitude and one morally despiciable. In the U.S., trans people aren't rounded up to be sent to death camps, and I've never heard of a single case of a closeted trans person trying to gain political power by running on a platform of anti-trans policies. But for some people, revealing their trans status would put them at immediate serious risk—for example, of physical violence or loss of child custody—and under such circumstances, keeping their gender transitions a secret is not morally wrong. It's like Anita Hemmings' choosing to pass as white to attend Vassar. It's risky, and it doesn't help other trans people, but it protects important life chances.

The question I wrestle with is how to morally evaluate the decision to live stealth lives by trans people who face more moderate risks. If you are a trans person who by luck of the draw and/or personal resources has a body strangers don't notice to be trans, and you keep your gender transition a secret, you have access to privileges most trans people don't. People may draw the analogy to, say, a gay man who has not come out of the closet, but the analogy is off for two reasons. First, the risks today are a lot higher if one is known to be trans gender than if one is known to be a gay man—there's less social acceptance of trans people, more harassment, and less legal protection. But secondly, any gay man can choose not to reveal his gay status and stay in the closet, while the majority of people who gender transition cannot hide the fact that they are trans. We can decide never to transition, but we can't decide to “go stealth” in our identified genders, just as most African Americans could not decide to pass for white as Hemmings did.

What I return to is the thought of Hemmings refusing to acknowledge her own mother. Passing as white to get into Vassar didn't hurt anyone, it just didn't benefit other African Americans. But living a stealth life often winds up involving stepping on others like oneself to raise one's privilege. I know of too many stealth trans people who would cross the street rather than walk next to someone who is obviously trans. I'm sure there are trans people out there who laugh at transphobic jokes to preserve their secret.

I try not to live a life of judgment. I know I benefit ever day from what gets called “passing privilege”--the ability, with my gender presentation going unchallenged, to go get some groceries without people nudging and staring, the ability to walk into a professional meeting and to just have people listen to a presentation I give, rather than treat me like some sort of freak. Personally, even if I could live a stealth existence, I wouldn't, because I'm fortunate enough to have job security and a loving trans spouse and a supportive kid who's old enough that I don't have to worry about her being taken away from me by child protective services because some neighbor places a call complaining that my home environment can't be safe for a child. Given my relative security, I feel a duty to the trans community to be out and open and to educate others. Still, I am grateful that if I bind and dress carefully, on most days, most people don't question my male status, and I can choose to wear a bunch of trans buttons or not. I can choose to reveal grand genderquerity and prance around in a beard and dress at a party—and then I can take off the dress if I choose and walk home in a pair of jeans without fear of harassment. I certainly don't think that people have a responsibility to always be out, in all places, at all times.

But I know that others don't have the privilege I do. Their trans status is always visible, written in their bodies. And it really burns me up to see other trans people with “passing privilege” distance themselves from them, or worse, blame the visibly trans for their victimhood when they are mistreated by transphobes.

I've heard trans people living stealth lives say that there is a split in the trans community between people who just want to get through their transitions and move on to live normal lives as women and men, and people who are too political, and angry, and “into” being trans for the drama of it all. According to this narrative, after one gender transitions, one is no longer trans, but a “real” man or woman, and people who don't live mostly stealth lives are exhibiting some sort of arrested development. Stealth living is presented as a matter of personal maturity, rather than of having the luck and resources to have a body that meets cissexist expecations, and of making the decision to avoid risk by choosing to conceal one's trans status. Thinking all the time about the oppression of trans people is presented as being obsessively political or overly dramatic, rather than the consequence of constantly facing oppression because of how one looks.

I abhor the argument that the suffering of other trans people is irrelevant to a post-transition person who “passes,” because they are no longer trans men or women, but “just” men or women. I agree our genders as trans people are no less real than those of cis people—and I think that dropping the “trans” adjective in fact suggests the opposite. A person who says they're no longer trans is saying that trans people aren't really their identified genders. I am a trans man, just as I am a Jewish man and a queer man. Anyone who says this makes me less of a “real” man is revealing their biases.

I am not passing as a man. I am a man. I do not wish to live a life hiding who I am and how I got here. I empathize with those whose life circumstances are such that they feel they must. But I am deeply pained when privileged trans people marginalize others already suffering because their trans status is visible to others.

Save yourselves, when danger presents itself. But don't step on others to do it.

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

This is a post aimed at my queer community allies, with some simple and hopefully entertaining illustrative charts.

As a trans man, I need to say that I am sick of seeing queer people dump on trans women.

Why would people marginalize others who are supposed to be part of the same LGBTQIA community? Occasionally I encounter it when I'm speaking with older lesbians who still buy the Evil Empire rhetoric that trans women are really men who are trying to smuggle their phallic privilege into women's safe spaces, in order to run the whole world and sneak peeks in women's bathrooms. More often I'm in a space dominated by gay male politicos where trans issues as a whole are thought of as distracting--something that scares off the Main Street straight supporters who might otherwise support same-sex marriage. But sadly, I run into it regularly in the sort of spaces I'm told should be most comfortable for me: spaces full of educated, activist, third-wave-feminist queer folks. The kind of places, ironically, where androgyny and genderquerity are celebrated as radical and transformational.

A while back I had a conversation with a young white cis lesbian--let's call her Sadie. Sadie had recently, she said, "discovered" trans men. (Perhaps we are some sort of continent. . .) She was telling me how cool she thought I and other trans men were, because we "got" sexism, having seen firsthand how women are treated. I chatted a bit about how gender transition is an interesting window into sex discrimination, as studies show that upon transitioning, trans women make significantly less money than they had previously, while trans men make about the same, or a bit more. Sadie paused a moment, then said, "Well, I don't know about trans women." I asked what she meant, and she replied, "I guess I've mostly only seen them on television, and they look like glamorous living stereotypes." I agreed that television gives a very limited view of what trans women are like--just as the images of (cis) lesbians in the media are usually either of hot femme chicks who are meant to appeal to male fantasy, or of butch women who are presented as the opposite of sexy. Sadie replied, "OK, that's true. But I'm still not sure about transsexual women. One did hang out with me at a party once and it was kind of freaky." I asked what she meant and she said, "I don't know, she just. . . well. . . didn't really look like a real woman, you know what I mean?"

At this point in the conversation I ran out of tolerant educational patience, and just said, "No, I don't know what you mean. You do realize that there are plenty of homophobic people out there who complain that lesbians don't look like 'real women.'" Sadie got flustered and replied defensively, "Yes, but she made me uncomfortable when she hung out with me at the party that night. I have a right to feel safe."

Dear Fellow Members of the Assigned-Female-At-Birth Queer Community: you have an absolute right to be safe. No one should be permitted to harass or harm you. But you do not have a right to feel safe, if you're going to define that as being free from challenge to your preconceptions. Protecting yourself from threatening acts is important, but treating another person as a threat just because you're uncomfortable what they look like is juvenile prejudice. How can you demand that society at large accept your gender transgression and your nonconforming appearance, say too bad if people think you look or act weird--and then turn around and tell other folks to conform to your expectations or you'll declare them weird and exclude them so you can feel nice and safe?

Look, I'll make it simple with a couple of charts. Yes, they're tongue-in-cheek. This is the universe of queer people, as viewed through the eyes of bigots you despise:

You see how most queer folk are marginalized and villainized, as you deplore. Now, here's the queer universe as seen from a transmisogynistic position:

Now the purple circle of querity is a circle of joy--yay--but trans women get excluded from the party. Well, unless they look and act just like cis queer woman, in which case you'll permit them entry in exactly the way that the Midwestern homophobes you detest tolerate that churchgoing, Lands'-End-wearing, quiet lesbian couple.

Before I get in trouble, let me reiterate that I myself am a member of the queer community who was assigned female at birth. I have plenty of great friends of every sex and gender location on the map who stand arm-in-arm with trans women and others who are especially marginalized. I'm not trying to demonize any group.

All I really want to say is please, avoid hypocrisy. Don't marginalize others for the very same reasons bigots marginalize you.

Saturday, July 9, 2011

I went to law school long before I transitioned. At Harvard Law, the setting of One L and The Paper Chase, the large lecture halls were the scene of verbal hazings, where self-confidence in argument and an unwillingness to back down when challenged by professors or peers were at least as important as legal reasoning in securing one's intellectual reputation. This goes far in explaining the fact that while everyone who got into Harvard Law entered with a stellar academic record, women quickly fell toward the bottom of the grade curve. Women in the U.S. are expected to be pleasantly deferential to powerful male authority figures and to avoid confrontation. When verbally interrupted, they're trained to be patient and let a powerful man have his say, then gently suggest why their position might be a reasonable alternative to his.

In the masculine realm of lawyerly identity, these women look weak. They cave; they lack confidence; they're judged mediocre students by their professors. But they're also seen as nice, as feminine, as sweet--and when skewered by an argument, as victims to be pitied. What makes someone a good woman worthy of protection also makes her a bad lawyer. (This interested me so much I eventually studied the phenomenon as a sociologist and wrote a book about it, Professional Identity Crisis.)

Back at law school, I was living as a woman. I looked like one, I dressed like one. But I didn't argue like one--I was cocky, assertive, and would not allow my line of argument to be derailed by peer or professor interrupting me as I laid it out. I did very well at law school as a result, but there's a social cost to being perceived as a woman with balls. Being who I am, it didn't bother me at all to be seen as unfeminine. I had no interest in being perceived as a sweet woman, as the material for a suitable feminine wife, as a "real woman" at all. So I could be as incisive and as intimidating as I liked.

It's odd, but now that I've gender transitioned, I have had to soften up. If I argue as aggressively and cuttingly as I did in the past, I tend to trigger competitive alpha-male reactions from men in authority, and come across as a bully to people with less social power. While this is true for any verbally assertive man, there's more to it for me as a trans man: my argument style, once gender-transgressive, is now seen as a gender stereotype, and comes across to people as forced--as me being a hyperaggressive, hypermasculine jerk to try to convince people I'm a "real man."

My spouse has to deal with this issue in reverse, and it's a worse problem for her. I don't think she was ever the aggressive, self-assured debater I was, and law school would not have been her thing. But she spent some years being perceived as a young white man, and that means that when she spoke, people at least listened to what she had to say, which is something everyone deserves. I can see that one of the things that is hard on her now--one of the things that would drive me totally nuts were I in her position--is that as a woman, she gets interrupted and talked over a lot by men. And like the women at Harvard Law School, she is caught in a real double bind. If she just lets men talk over her, she is treated dismissively and feels patronized. But if she refuses to let a man talk over her, and pushes back, then while she may protect her intellectual reputation and self-esteem, she's seen as unfeminine. And for her, that can be downright dangerous.

When someone is a cis (not trans) woman and acts in a clearly unfeminine manner, she is seen as a "woman with balls"--a difficult but powerful woman. But when a trans woman acts this way, she's just seen as a man. The first situation may be uncomfortable for cis women, but the latter situation is terribly painful for a trans woman, and in some cases leaves her open to transphobic violence. And so my spouse generally just has to let men talk over her and patronize her and mansplain to her things like computer hardware about which she knows much more than they. And if she complains about having to do this when chatting with other women, cis women often tsk tsk and tell her to be a good feminist and let the men have what's coming to them. But they don't get it. The costs for her are much, much higher than they are for cis women when they refuse to conform to gender expectations.

So here you see laid out the horns of the trans dilemma when it comes to gender norms: if we as trans people conform to them, we're often seen as walking gender stereotypes: "Oh, all those trans men with their regressive masculinity, wearing their hair in crew cuts and talking over you! And the trans women are even worse, wearing makeup and heels to the grocery store and letting men talk over them as if feminism were never invented!" But if we transgress the norms of our identified genders, we may pay the terrible price of having our gender identities denied and mocked. "He's a freak--an asshole dude in a skirt who doesn't even know how real women act."

We as trans people are caught in a Catch-22 by cissexism. If we gender-conform, we're stereotyped dupes, but if we gender-transgress, we're not who we say we are, and deserve to be mocked and mispronouned, disdained and harassed. And this is where our friends and allies come in to the picture. We need your help to escape the horns of this dilemma. If you hear someone denying that we're "really" men or women because we don't "look like a real man" or "act like a real woman," please speak up and question why someone would think trans people need to be walking gender stereotypes to have their gender identities respected. And if you hear someone complaining conversely that trans people are too stereotyped in our appearance or behavior, point out to them that we're forced into this awkward position by a transphobic society that will use any excuse to say "Aha! That's really a man/woman." Because like anyone else we just want the space to be full, complex human beings. And we all need to help one another along toward that goal. Most of us are privileged in some ways and marginalized in others, and we need to have one another's backs--so I share with you a dilemma that presses on my trans family in the hope that it will help you help me and mine along. I try to do my best to return the favor when I'm the privileged one in the room.

Friday, July 8, 2011

[The following is a handout I use in the courses I teach. Feel free to make use of it yourself--just credit me, Cary Gabriel Costello.]

In order to gain expertise in a field, you need to learn the terms that are used by people who are knowledgeable about it. The more of the terminology you know, the more sophisticated you can be in discussing the field, which is empowering. For example, if you know nothing about how a car works, and you open up the hood, you may just see a bunch of unidentifiable chunks of metal and wire, and call it all “the engine.” If your car isn’t working well, you can’t do much about it. If you learn to identify a couple of basic things—say, the dipstick so you can check your oil, and the battery so you can jump-start your car—you’ll have some minimal competence to deal with common automotive issues, but you still won’t know how a car works. But if you are taught to identify the ignition system, the engine block and valves, the cooling system, the transmission, the fuel system, and how the components interrelate, you can have intelligent conversations about cars and car maintenance that will stand you in good stead if you need to buy or repair a car.

When laypeople don’t know a lot about a field and hear people with expertise use the field’s terms of art, the laypeople may consider the terms overly precise, obfuscatory, or simply irritating. Laypeople may snort when winetasters talk about the wine having a “nose,” a “shoulder,” or a “finish.” Those unfamiliar with American football may laugh at positions like “tight end” and “nose guard.” To the cooking novice, it may seem silly to distinguish between sautéing and searing, or roasting and braising. But if you want to learn to appreciate wine, follow a football game, or cook good food from scratch, you will find that the terms of art are actually very important.

In studying sex and gender, you will come to use language that is a lot more complex and precise than that used in ordinary streetcorner conversation. At first, the terminology may strike you as confusing, or making tiny distinctions that seem unnecessary. But as you move through the course and learn more, you’ll find the terms allow you to have much more sophisticated discussions.

That said, below you’ll find a guide to the terminology that will be employed in this course.

Genital characteristics: differentiation of the fetal phalloclitoris into penis/scrotum or clitoris/labia. The degree of differentiation varies.

Gonadal characteristics: differentiation of the fetal ovotestes into testes or ovaries (which occasionally does not occur).

Secondary sexual characteristics: differentiation of the body under the influence of the sex steroid hormones (testosterone, estrogen, progesterone), typically at puberty. The body normally produces both masculinizing (testosterone) and feminizing (estrogen, progesterone) hormones—the ratio of these determines the relative masculinization/feminization of the body as follows:

Testosterone effects: growth of bodily hair, growth of facial hair, increase in upper body width, increased muscle mass, growth of the larynx leading the voice to lower, fat deposition in abdomen, increased size of penis/clitoris, increase in libido, production of semen/lubrication, increase in sweat and oil production, increase in size of testes and sperm production, irritability.

Sex Categories: a manner of dividing the sex spectrum into socially-recognized units. In Western societies, there are three sex categories, defined under the authority of medical science as follows:

Female: a person ideally possessing a vagina, labia, a clitoris of less that 0.5 cm at birth, ovaries, a uterus, XX chromosomes, and an estrogen-dominant hormone profile.

Male: a person ideally possessing a penis of length greater than 2 cm at birth, scrotum, testes residing in the scrotum, a prostate, XY chromosomes, and a testosterone-dominant hormone profile.

Intersex: a person whose intermediate position on the sex spectrum fits neither the ideal male or female category, including:

those with intermediate phalloclitoral genitalia;

those with internally ambiguous gonads and/or reproductive anatomy;

those with chromosomal variation (e.g., XY individuals with ovaries, vagina, clitoris; those with atypical sex chromosomes such as XXY or Xo); and

those whose hormone-dominance causes their secondary sexual characteristics to contrast with their primary sexual characteristics.

Social Sex Assignment: the assignment of an individual to a particular socially validated sex, usually at birth.

Dyadic sex assignment: in Western societies, all infants must be categorized as either male or female on their birth certificates. Those classified as belonging to the intersex category must receive either a male or female assignment.

Gender Roles: cultural norms applied to people of different assigned sexes in a given society, including occupational roles, appearance standards (clothing, grooming, cosmetics), emotional norms, and interests. Gender roles are categorized as:

Masculine: the collection of norms for male-assigned people in a given society

Feminine: the collection of norms for female-assigned people in a given society

Additional gender roles: neutral or additional gender roles specific to a given society

Gender Identity: the subjective experience of identifying with a gender role—the internal knowledge that one is a man, a woman, or a member of an alternative gender.

Cis gender identity: gender identity that matches one’s primary sex characteristics (e.g., a person born with vulva, ovaries and uterus who identifies as a woman)

Ipso gender identity: gender identity that matches one's social sex assignment at birth, when this differs from one's primary sex characteristics (e.g., a person born with intermediate genitalia who is assigned to the female social sex category at birth and grows up to identify as a woman)

Trans gender identity: gender identity that does not match one’s social sex assignment at birth (e.g., a person born with phallus and testes who identifies as agender, genderqueer, a woman, etc.), which may lead to:

Gender transition: to move from following one set of gender roles to another, changing characteristics such as clothing, grooming, cosmetics, and pronoun used; sometimes accompanied by:

Sex transition: to move from one social sex assignment to another through medical treatment with hormonal alteration of secondary sex characteristics, and/or surgical alteration of anatomic sex characteristics (chest, genital, gonadal, laryngeal, etc.)

Gender Expression: individual self-presentation as a member of a given gender, including:

Gender-conforming expression: self-presentation that is strongly in accord with the normative gender role expectations of one’s society;

Androgynous expression: self-presentation which does not align strongly with polarized male or female roles; and

Gender-transgressive expression: self-presentation that defies the traditional expectations for a person of a given gender identity (e.g. feminine men, masculine women).

Sexual Identity: the sex or gender alignment of partners in sexual attraction, including:

Dyadic sexual orientation frames: in which one must know the binary sex/gender of both individuals in order to classify them as:

Heterosexual: being attracted to a person whose sex and gender are dyadically opposite of one’s own

Homosexual: being attracted to a person whose sex and gender are the same as one’s own (i.e., gay men and lesbian women)

Bisexual: being attracted to both dyadic sexes

Directional sexual orientation frames: under which one need only know the gender of the person desired to assign the desiring person as:

Androphilic: being attracted to people of male gender

Gynephilic: being attracted to people of female gender

Androgynephilic: being attracted to people who are androgynously gendered or intermediately sexed

Pansexual: being attracted to people independent of any particular sex or gender status or identity

Initially, the number of categories employed in sex/gender scholarship may seem overlarge to you. After all, you may reason, most people are born girls or boys, pronounced so at birth, identify as such, and generally follow their assigned gender role. In fact, however, the variance is wide, and the terms we’ll use will help us to describe varieties of different experience.

I will illustrate using myself as a guinea pig. One of the reasons I developed an academic interest in sex and gender is that I am among those with quite variant experience. I was born intersex, with atypical anatomy; since that anatomy included an ovotestis I am medically classified as "True Gonadal Intersex.” So, my sex category is intersex, but our American society practices dyadic sex assignment, and I was given a female sex assignment at birth. My gender identity, however, did not develop to match that sex assignment, being male. Although I had a trans gender identity, I continued to live within my assigned sex for decades before I began to gender transition, and later sex transition. My gender expression was androgynously feminine when I lived in my assigned female sex, and is androgynously masculine now that I have transitioned to male. As an intersex person, my sexual identity cannot be understood through the dyadic sexual orientation frame (how can a person who is of neither the male nor the female sex be either straight or gay?). Under the directional sexual orientation frame, I am classified as pansexual. My spouse is an intersex person who identifies as female.

Practice using this system of terms now by considering where your body falls on the sex spectrum, listing your sex category, sex assignment, and gender identity, considering social sex roles and characterizing your gender expression as conforming, transgressive or androgynous (along what dimensions of gender norm expectations do you conform or transgress?), and listing your sexual identity.

A Note on Pronouns

English contains three common gender pronouns: “he,” “she”
and “it.”Note that English-speaking
society grants personhood through dyadic gender: people are called “he” or
“she,” and only objects called “it.”To
call a person “it” is often considered insulting.

Note that many other world languages do not use gendered
pronouns (including Polynesian languages, Farsi, Turkic languages, Bengali,
Armenian, and many others).Speakers of
these languages do not face the difficulty of having to specify a person's
gender in order to speak of that person.

In the past, when a person's gender was not known, the
English rule was to call the unknown person “he.”This is now considered gender-biased.Formal English writing typically uses “s/he”
instead: “A child must be given the opportunity to tie his/her shoes by
himself/herself so that s/he can learn.”This formal solution is quite awkward.In practical speech, Americans often use the gender-neutral plural
pronoun “they” as a singular pronoun instead: “A kid needs the chance to tie
their shoes if they're going to learn.”This
is often deemed ungrammatical and frowned upon in formal writing, but was in fact common in Shakespeare's day. Grammar is always in flux, and the use of the singular “they”
should be respected in its revived usage.

For those personally or grammatically uncomfortable with the
singular “they,” gender-neutral pronouns have been introduced in English.There are several alternatives now in use,
such as ze/zir/zim instead of he/his/him or she/hers/her.I will use ze/zir/zim at times in this
course: “A child must be allowed to tie zir own shoes so that ze can learn.”

I encourage you to try using ze/zir/zim in your course
writing when you speak of a person of unknown gender, to gain practice using alternative pronouns.

About Me

I'm an academic and scaler of boundary walls, intersex by birth, female-reared, legally transitioned to male status, and pleased with my trajectory. Come journey with me! I blog about intersex issues at http://intersexroadshow.blogspot.com/, and about trans issues at http://trans-fusion.blogspot.com/.
If you are interested in contacting me or having me speak to your organization, please email intersexroadshow@gmail.com.

Popular Posts

For a guide on sex and gender terminology you can use and share, click here. You can find my critique of the concept of "passing" here. Click here for a discussion on the rights of intersex and trans kids. Here's where I explain that testosterone doesn't "work better" than estrogen. And my posts on TERFs--trans exclusionary radical feminists--can be found here and here.